Choral Works for mixed chorus a capella

The Netherlands Chamber Choir was founded in 1937. Over the years such composers as Francis Poulenc, Hendrik Andriessen, Henk Badings and Rudolf Escher wrote works for the ensemble. In 1965 the Dutch government decided to undertake to bear completely the payment of the singers. This enabled the Netherlands Chamber Choir to occupy a unique place among the professional choirs in Europe without any firm bond to an opera house or a broadcasting corporation. The Netherlands Chamber Choir applies itself first of all to the repertory for a cappella chorus. It also collaborates regularly with various ensembles like the Schonberg Ensemble, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, The repertory of the Netherlands Chamber Choir spans the whole of Western music, ranging from the early Middle Ages to contemporary music. Uwe Gronostay was born in Hildesheim, Germany in 1939 and studied church music in Hannover, Bremen and Siena. From 1963 onwards Gronostay worked as cantor and organist in Bremen, where he founded the Nord-deutscbe Figuralchor in 1966. In 1972 he was appointed conductor of the Berlin RIAS-Kammerchor. ln 1982 he became conductor of the Philharmonische Chor Berlin, and has remained its artistic leader till the present day. Many composers, such as Mauricio Kagel, Milko Kelemen, Carl Orff, Krzystof Penderecki, Aribert Reimann and Heinz Werner Zimmermann· wrote works of which the first performance was entrusted to Uwe Gronostay. Herbert von Karajan, Seiji Ozawa, Riccardo Muti, Riccardo Chailly and Gerd Albrecht have regularly appealed to him when practising big works with chorus. In 1987 Uwe Gronostay vacated his post as principal conductor of the RIAS-Kammerchor in order to apply himself to his many guest conductorships. He succeeded Helmuth Rilling as teacher at the Hochschule fiir Musik and DarsteUende Kunst in Frankfurt/Main and in September

1989 he was also entrusted with the management of the new department for choral conducting at the HochscbuJe der Kunste in Berlin.

 

• In 1995 the musical world will celebrate the fact that Paul Hindemith, one of the truly great composers of the 20th century, was born one hundred years ago. This recording of some of his major works for chorus a cappella, including his last composition, the Mass from his year of death, 1963, is therefore alone already a major issue.

• Few choirs in the world can tackle this technically extremely difficult repertoire as the illustrious Netherlands Chamber Choir and their brilliant conductor Uwe Gronostay do!

• This is also one of the few CD's in the catalogue that are completely devoted to these choral works by Hindemith and some of the works here receive their first performance on CD as well!